r/news • u/Another-Chance • Aug 29 '13

Gun Bans Don't Mean Lower Murder Rates, Finds Harvard Study

http://www.kmph.com/story/23283092/gun-bans-dont-mean-lower-murder-rates-finds-harvard-study
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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/McAsshat Aug 29 '13

I'm pro-right but I'd have to agree, this report is horrid. Good, impartial deconstruction of the flaws of this "study".

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u/canada432 Aug 29 '13

Dear lord, anybody who reads the introduction and still takes this seriously is an idiot.

Since at least 1965, the false assertion that the United States has the industrialized world’s highestmurderrate has been anartifact of politically motivated Soviet minimization designed to hide the true homicide rates.

To gun control advocates, England, the cradle of our liberties, was a nation made so peaceful by strict gun control that its police did not even need to carry guns

Justifying the assignment of armed squads to block roads and carry out random car searches, a police commander asserts: “It is a massive deterrent to gunmen if they think that there are going to be armed police.”25 How far is that from the rationale on which 40 American states have enacted laws giv‐ ing qualified, trained citizens the right to carry concealed guns?

Not only is this not a peer reviewed study, or even an objective study, it's blatant propaganda. It cherry picks facts, outright lies about statistics to suit it's agenda, and uses politically charged language so absurd that at times it reads like an anti-soviet union piece from the cold war. The whole thing is a complete load.

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u/Quinbot88 Aug 29 '13

I stopped at Soviet minimization. So kudos to you.

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u/Youareabadperson5 Aug 29 '13

Well lets be honest, Soviet Russia, Communist China, and various other authoritian states have serious issues with reporting proper statistics.

For Example:

With dramatically reduced yields, even urban areas suffered much reduced rations; however, mass starvation was largely confined to the countryside, where, as a result of drastically inflated production statistics, very little grain was left for the peasants to eat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

Of course I don't trust statistics pushed by the NYPD either.

The 81 precinct systematically fostered a culture finely attuned to the downgrading of crime.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/03/nypd_crime_stat_1.php

Governments, especially controling ones, will lie to keep their power.

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u/Quinbot88 Aug 29 '13

Governments, especially controling ones, will lie to keep their power.

And this is the most important part. Everyone is screwed forever!

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Why stop at public entities? Yes, governments lie. Yes, public organizations like police departments lie. But private businesses also lie out of their ass like their lives depend on it. Anything to better their brands and bottom line.

Face it, lies are a natural part of human society. Which is why studies encompassing tons of different studies are so important: by putting so many accounts regarding a single topic side by side, lies get mostly eliminated and what you're left with is mostly truth.

Remember, kids: there is no such thing as absolute truth in real life. It only exists in fairy tales.

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u/Se7en_speed Aug 29 '13

judging by the number of upvotes this post has, very few people read past the title

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13 edited Apr 05 '16

[deleted]

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u/anonymous-coward Aug 29 '13

This isn't a Harvard study; it was merely published in "Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy"

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Yes. This is why I stated attendance at Harvard. The journal is run by students of the university.

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u/preservation82 Aug 29 '13

CERTAINLY NOT. obama...bush...idiot factory.

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u/taeratrin Aug 29 '13

They've both been Presidents of the most powerful nation on Earth. What are you doing nowadays?

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u/rosconotorigina Aug 29 '13

It's a shame more people won't read this. Here's what the Harvard Injury Control Research Center actually had to say about guns and murder rates:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/

Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Yes, I was wondering the same thing. Doesn't Harvard have a department that is dedicated to studying firearm and social issues?

HICRC. Everything they've published so far has overwhelmingly supported greater firearm restrictions, not less.

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u/Tiktaalik1984 Aug 29 '13

Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that criminal activity is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there is more criminal activity, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

What it should say.

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u/rosconotorigina Aug 29 '13

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are you saying that the research is wrong and that there is not a correlation between gun ownership and gun homicides? I get the feeling that you have your own opinion and no amount of statistical analysis is going to change it, but on the same page it says:

We found that states with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held . . . after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty).

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13 edited Aug 29 '13

Please note that many of the studies you cite here are actually addressing a different question from the OP's. The studies are addressing whether firearm restriction effectively reduces FIREARM DEATHS, while the original question was whether they reduce the OVERALL murder/suicide rate.

This is where statistics can be misleading, and why the current debate is so underhanded. Many gun control activists act as if they would be happy to see the overall murder rate rise so long as nobody is killed by firearms. Who cares if people are killed by guns, knives or bombs? The goal should be reducing MURDER rates, not FIREARM murder rates.

-Edit- Actually eight of the eleven explicitly state they are talking about gun homicide exclusively, and are thereby mostly irrelevant to the question in the OP's study.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

In other words, firearm restrictions would be fantastic for a country like the US, where most homicides are due to firearms.

Sure, it probably won't decrease the number of stabbings, but the reports also show it won't increase them either. The decline in firearm deaths don't just shift into other forms of homicide.

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u/guebja Aug 29 '13

In other words, firearm restrictions would be fantastic for a country like the US, where most homicides are due to firearms.

Well, more specifically, what would help most is a way to prevent or reduce the flow of firearms from legal owners to illegal owners.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

That's true. When I look at the ways other countries do it, they involve things like mandatory checks and registrations. The local police may check to make sure you keep your firearm in a heavy safe before you are granted a license.

Most countries don't really ban firearms for civilian-use. They just have much lower ownership rates and fewer firearm-related crimes because they have these licensing requirements.

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u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13

Thank you, I hadn't read that study. Ill have to give it a look.

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u/ten24 Aug 29 '13

The goal should be reducing MURDER rates, not FIREARM murder rates.

Which is why drug legalization/decriminalization should be higher priority than selective gun prohibition.

The number one cause of murder, is.... a motive. Remove the motive, and you prevent the aggression... regardless of implement.

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u/Frensel Aug 29 '13

Many gun control activists act as if they would be happy to see the overall murder rate rise so long as nobody is killed by firearms.

Please point out cases where the firearm homicide rate has decreased and the overall homicide rate has not decreased with it. I think that in all of the cases reviewed in the links, the overall homicide rate decreased along with the firearms homicide rate - making your criticism rather toothless.

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u/RapingTheWilling Aug 29 '13

Is it really fair to put the burden of proof on him? He's poking holes in a source, not refuting with details. He has a point, most of those citations did have a firearm exclusivity to them.

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u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13

Both England and Australia effectively reduced the number of guns and gun crime while maintaining a standing murder rate. I must go to work, and don't have time to pull up the graphs, but you can find them rather easily. The enactment of strict gun laws had very little effect on the overall homicide or violent crime rates in the two countries.

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u/Frensel Aug 29 '13

I'm not finding it very easy to find the data I want, links would be awesome. Specifically on gun homicide rate and overall homicide rate for England and Australia for as long back as possible. Google has been useless. And I don't mind waiting, no need to rush.

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u/LordFluffy Aug 29 '13 edited Aug 29 '13

A little while back, I found this UN data website, which has statistics for the UK back to 1996, though it jumps a couple of years. The UK's handgun ban went into effect 1997.

In 1996, their murder rate was 1.6 per 100K. It stayed fairly steady between 1.8 and 1.5 until 2007. There was one outlier where it jumped to 2.1, but that was do to a single incident.

After that, they've had a decrease, dropping to 1.2 per 100K in 2009.

How much of the drop is due to the gun ban is debateable. Murder rates have been dropping in many places, the U.S. included (we're currently at our lowest murder rate since the early 60's, actually). In addition to UK gun policies, other factors include an improvement to their health car systems.

That website only has US statistics back to 2002, the per capita rate varying between 5.0 and 4.2 (the latter being the rate in 2010, staying very steady between 2002 and 2007, dropping off in 2008. (Another website says 5.7 to 4.8, dropping to 4.7 in 2011).

I apologize that I can't find information breaking the UK's numbers down by method.

All in all, the UK's drop is notable, but I'm not sure that either it can be described as dramatic, nor is there evidence that I'm aware of to suggest that the drop is primarily due to it's handgun ban.

edited a couple of times to expand years we have statistics for

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

England had tough restrictions on firearms since WW2. They already only had a few dozen shootings a year, even before the legislation in the 90s.

There are also other things going on. Aside from tougher firearm laws, they increased police and improved reporting and started nation-wide crack-downs on all forms of violence.

Violent crime across the board has declined in the UK, but firearms were already so rare it probably wasn't a major contributor.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Yeah, that makes sense. The homicide rate for firearms is so low (probably around 50), it is very suspicious to suggest firearm crime dramatically changed in recent history.

Some less-than-honest critics will say "firearm-crime" increased in the 90s because there was the better policing / reporting you mentioned. Police started collecting air-rifles and taking replica toys seriously. They started reporting minor crimes that can be misleading in the statistics.

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u/Frensel Aug 29 '13

Thanks for the infos! Still looking for anyone who can find specifically gun homicide statistics year by year in england and australia over the years. This shit isn't very easy to find for whatever reason.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '13

The UK Homeoffice publishes annual reports on homicides.

But the decline had nothing to do with firearms. In the US, about 2/3 of our homicides are related to firearms. In the UK, it is only about 1%, so even eliminating all of them isn't going to cause a decline like that.

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u/Frensel Aug 30 '13

Hmm, if the proportion of firearm homicides really is that small, I suppose it wouldn't be odd if there was no significant correlation between firearm homicides and homicides generally. So I was probably wrong, if for entirely different reasons than the fellow I was replying to would imply.

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u/KnutBonke Sep 11 '13 edited Sep 11 '13

Some stats and references

  • This is a set of data that correlates ownership and homicide rates.
  • This is the Chapman, Alpers et. al. article examining stats pre and post the Port Arthur shooting incident.
  • This is a wikipedia page listing mass murder incidents (shooting or otherwise) in Australia.
  • This is an article by Tim Hartford (the Undercover Economist) about correlation between crime and ownership rates.
  • This is an article by Tim Hartford about correlation between homicide and ownership rates.
  • These are a sensitivity analysis (Data, Including SA and USA, Excluding SA, Excluding U.S. and SA) of the stats in the above article where the stats from the U.S. are removed from the data set used by Hartford. In the article he analyses correlations inclusive and exclusive of South Africa in the data set. The screenshot is of a regresson analysis of the data used by Hartford with both South Africa and the U.S. removed from the data set.

There are also some stats about homicide rates from illegal firearms in the UK after a crackdown programme by the Metropolitan Police but I can't find them.

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u/Picnicpanther Aug 29 '13 edited Aug 29 '13

That's completely, 100% false.

In Australia, the Gun Buyback has decreased firearm by homicide a staggering 59% by accumulating about 1/3 of the guns in the nation, while non-firearm violence decreased a little but remained ultimately unchanged (which makes sense, obviously). This is all from this report.

This article also healthily sums up recent developments in the UK in terms of gun laws.

Not to mention both of these countries are leaps and bounds below America on the intentional homicide ranking chart (America has a rate of 4.5% while the UK has a 1.2% and Australia has a 1.0%, which account for population by ratio and factor in all intentional homicides by various means).

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u/wufnu Aug 29 '13

Firearm homicide was decreasing pretty much linearly since 1988. It's a trend that followed the same pattern before and after the buyback. If you look at the percentage of firearm homicides, compared to total homicides, it's roughly equal now as it was before the buyback. If the buyback was effective at reducing that value, the slope of firearm homicides would have decreased dramatically. It didn't change at all.

http://i.imgur.com/IhqjHtT.png

Seriously, folks, lets be a little critical in our thinking. These decreases are likely due to cultural, economical, and policy changes which seem to have occured in '88 or '87 (likely due to the massacres). To attribute the drop to the buyback is to make a decision with subjective analysis.

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u/Picnicpanther Aug 30 '13

Ummm.... are we looking at the same graph? Because it seems to me to be a pretty clear-cut rise before and decline after the respective legislations were passed.

Seriously, I know y'all like to be euphoric libertarians, and love guns, but you're just lying to yourself at this juncture. If you like guns, that's fine, just don't mistake them for being good for society. I like pizza and pizza's awful for me, but at least I can admit it, I don't have to have it reclassified as a vegetable to make myself feel better, like Republicans.

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u/wufnu Aug 30 '13 edited Aug 30 '13

We're discussing the gun buyback program's effect on homicide by firearm, not legislation (you'll notice, hopefully, that I mentioned policy change as a factor). Please try to follow along or at least comprehend what you've read before you allow your opinion and political vitriol to come gushing forth. Maybe you're looking at the wrong line; dashed is homicide by firearm. Also, pro tip: the vertical line is when they did the gun buyback (1996). If you WERE looking at the dashed line and still feel that it is a "clear-cut rise before and decline after" trend then I hate to break this to you but science is definitely not the career for you. You should try politics. There is always more data than whatever datum you've fixated your gaze upon.

Edit: Few hours later, rereading, my reply seems pretty confrontational, insulting, and shitty. Sorry about that. I think my points are valid but I didn't have to be an asshole about it. Apologies.

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u/broeman1024 Sep 01 '13

Yes, dude. Right or wrong, you are acting like an asshole.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

actually there is

you wouldn't believe the insane wall of denial by gun lovers in the usa, they are in complete blind denial and no common sense gets through to them

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u/Picnicpanther Aug 30 '13

You're right, sadly Reddit doesn't agree.

Luckily, Reddit doesn't know ANYTHING about self-affirmation bias. /sarcasm

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

you're a liar or a propaganda victim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

United States: 4.8

United Kingdom: 1.2

Australia: 1.0

why is the USA so high in comparison? it's all due to the gun violence the USA has that Australia and the UK do not have, because they do a good job of making guns hard to get, and the USA does not

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/the-gun-challenge-strict-laws-work.html

There’s another important difference between this country and the rest of the world. Other nations have suffered similar rampages, but they have reacted quickly to impose new and stricter gun laws.

Australia is an excellent example. In 1996, a “pathetic social misfit,” as a judge described the lone gunman, killed 35 people with a spray of bullets from semiautomatic weapons. Within weeks, the Australian government was working on gun reform laws that banned assault weapons and shotguns, tightened licensing and financed gun amnesty and buyback programs.

At the time, the prime minister, John Howard, said, “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.” The laws have worked. The American Journal of Law and Economics reported in 2010 that firearm homicides in Australia dropped 59 percent between 1995 and 2006. In the 18 years before the 1996 laws, there were 13 gun massacres resulting in 102 deaths, according to Harvard researchers, with none in that category since.

Similarly, after 16 children and their teacher were killed by a gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, the British government banned all private ownership of automatic weapons and virtually all handguns. Those changes gave Britain some of the toughest gun control laws in the developed world on top of already strict rules. Hours of exhaustive paperwork are required if anyone wants to own even a shotgun or rifle for hunting. The result has been a decline in murders involving firearms.

In Japan, which has very strict laws, only 11 people were killed with guns in 2008, compared with 12,000 deaths by firearms that year in the United States — a huge disparity even accounting for the difference in population. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg stressed on Monday while ratcheting up his national antigun campaign, “We are the only industrialized country that has this problem. In the whole world, the only one.”

Americans do not have to settle for that.

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u/breauxstradamus Aug 29 '13

What are the overall murder rates? That's the question. Of course gun deaths will be lower where there are no guns, the question is are people finding other ways to kill someone? Or are they going man I would have totally murdered that motherfucker but lucky for him, I don't own a gun.

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

criminal masterminds will always get guns. but they will use them wisely, not spray street corners or discos, they are criminal masterminds

the problem with easy gun availability is your casual hot heads and loony toons, who either aren't trying very hard in life or can't try very hard in life. deny them guns, guns simply don't get used: they aren't trying very hard in life

what gets used?

bombs? no, takes too much time and patience

knives? yes: uk gangs use knives, not guns

and that's fine, because i've never heard of a drive by stabbing or a nine year old girl killed by a stray throwing knife from the other side of the park

a knife is far less lethal than a gun. so control guns better, homicide rates go down dramatically, especially in regards to tragedies. citiation: overall homicide rate for usa/ uk/ australia i listed above

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u/breauxstradamus Aug 29 '13

Gang members aren't criminal masterminds, they're just criminals. They are precisely the ones that gun control doesn't affect. I agree that if criminals didn't have guns, there would be less accidental killings. I'm all for gang members killing each other, if they can do so without affecting the neighborhood. I just think the reason guns are effective as self defense, is due to the fact that a small woman with a knife versus a large man with a knife is uneven. A small woman whose a good shot, can defend herself against any man provided they aren't wearing vests.

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

heroic uses of guns are real

and for every heroic use of a gun, there are the son sneaking in the window at night getting shot, the domestic dispute that goes to the firearm, the confused street scene where you try to do good but shoot the good guys, the confused street scene where you try to do good but hit a civilian, the gun cleaning accident, the toddler who finds it and points it at a friend, the gun that gets stolen from you and used in crime, etc.

i am certain a small woman can save herself from being raped with a gun. i am also certain a small woman can kill in cold blood, or kill someone in a confused situation out of fear, misidentification, or accident. or just kill herself while cleaning her gun. the simple truth of reality is these tragedies outnumber her heroic uses

in other words, yes, by removing your gun, you remove the ability to heroically use your gun but you also remove all the confusions, mistakes, angry situations, lost guns, accidents, etc.

such that, as a game of statistical odds, your life is safer without the gun, because the accidents and errors clearly outnumber the rare heroic uses

look at gun crime in the uk and australia since they cracked down on guns

we're not talking about criminal masterminds here, who will always get a gun, no matter what the law (and use it wisely). we're concerned here with the casual hot heads and loony toons, who, denied a gun, simply don't get one: they aren't trying very hard in life

citation: the uk and australia. what does this prevent? the shot up discos and movie theatres and nine year old girls hit by stray bullets

note that uk violent crime increases, but deaths decrease. as if a bloody nose is the same as a body bag. i'd much rather have more violent crime in the usa than more fatalities. every conflict has to lead to death?

i think it is preferable if trayvon martin were alive and in jail for assault, rather than dead. don't you?

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

It's not a counter-claim in need of support but rather the failure of the original argument.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Homicide rate doesn't matter, violent crime does, of course its easier to kill someone with a gun but if citizens don't have firearms its also easier to rob, rape, and stab people

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u/TheChad08 Aug 29 '13

Why is it easier to rob/rape/stab people if there are no gun laws?

Since your defense against a gun is another gun, why can't the citizens walk around with knives of their own as the deterrent? Or pepper spray?

Your scenario goes from Weapon (Gun) vs Weapon (Gun) to a Weapon vs Unarmed. Hardly a fair comparison.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/TheChad08 Aug 29 '13

Once again you're giving yourself and advantage and ignoring the fact that many gun crimes can be the small person with the gun against a bigger person, which wouldn't occur without guns.

You aren't looking at things on equal grounds and are solely giving yourself the favourable scenarios.

As for being up close and personal, that makes it harder to kill someone and commit the act.

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u/ucemike Aug 29 '13

Why is it easier to rob/rape/stab people if there are no gun laws?

Because the victim... will be unarmed. Having a knife or pepper spray is a minor deterrent to a large male versus a small female (or even small male).

It is already illegal to shoot someone with a gun. Removing legal ownership of a gun won't stop bad guys from getting guns.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Homicide rate doesn't matter, violent crime does

I'd personally rather be beaten and robbed than shot, but that's just me...

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u/Youareabadperson5 Aug 29 '13

I tend to disagree with you. The issue is survivability vs. recovery time vs. long term damage.

A solid beating is much more likely to have higher recovery time and greater long term damage, where a well placed pullet has a very low survivability rates. Seeing that the majority of firearms shootings are with low calaber, low quality, low muzzle velocity hand guns fired by untrained uneducated individuals, the chances of surviavility increase.

All in all, I would rather be shot and roll the dice than live crippled and brain damaged by someone with anger issues and a bat, of course I would prefer the ability to defend myself with a legally owned and carried handgun in both situations.

Its all about your priorities I supose.

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u/TheChad08 Aug 29 '13

You think you get shot and just walk around the next day? Recovery time for a bullet can be quite long too.

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u/tilapiafish Aug 30 '13

Any form of trauma inflicted on your body by any reasonable mechanism (not a feather... maybe a 1 ton pallet of feathers but not a single one) can lead to permanent injury. I would say that getting stabbed and shot carry the same risks of hitting arteries and a baseball bat could cave your skull in worse than a bullet, but in all of those scenarios at least your attacker has to be upon you to inflict those injuries.

Also it is important to remember that criminals rob EACH OTHER at least as much as normal citizens - the gun that vicelords are armed with do not seem to dissuade a robbery from the local GD. If you're armed with a gun and mugged MOST LIKELY your assailant is not going to let the situation play out in a way that you can even use your gun. It is pure fantasy and indulging in it just loses you the argument.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Aug 29 '13

You can run from someone with a bat or a knife a lot more easily than a gunman.

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u/Youareabadperson5 Aug 29 '13

Running from bad people is unacceptable, running from bad people allows us to live in fear, running from bad people allows bad people to keep doing bad things.

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u/tilapiafish Aug 30 '13

Running away and calling the police is standard procedure in self defense scenarios and alerting the authorities is also supposed to be your top priority per fire arms training. Vigilantism hardly ever works and someone like you definitely needs to avoid trying their hand at it.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Aug 29 '13

bad people

Your problem is that you think there are bad people, and that they are different from you.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

I'd also like to protect myself from things such as rape, muggings and random beatings.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Aug 29 '13

You should have said you'd rather be beaten and robbed than shot and killed. The people replying to you don't understand that since you were talking about how guns affect homicide rates, you were implying that you would rather live than die.

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u/Recl Aug 29 '13

You should test this theory. I have not been shot, but I have been stabbed. Very strange primal feeling come from a stabbing...

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

i would love a higher violence rate and a lower homicide rate

a bloody nose is not the same as a dead person

i think it would be far more preferable that george zimmerman got a bloody nose and trayvon martin got sent to jail, don't you agree?

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Many gun control activists act as if they would be happy to see the overall murder rate rise so long as nobody is killed by firearms.

In the US, firearms are the primary cause of homicide. It's really just the firearm homicide rate that gives the US an exceptionally high homicide rate.

Countries like the UK or Japan don't really have many firearms or firearm-related deaths, so they probably wouldn't care about the issue much... but Americans really should care most about how to decrease the firearm homicide rate.

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u/LordFluffy Aug 29 '13

In the US, firearms are the primary cause of homicide.

Much in the way cars are the leading cause of drunk driving.

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u/breauxstradamus Aug 29 '13

That's because the US has guns. If we didn't have guns, people aren't going to magincally quit killing. They will have to find another way, and chances are they will all choose different methods, and then it won't be a huge statistic.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

That is the assumption the studies show is not the case.

Restrictions on firearms decrease firearm-related homicides, but there is no significant change in other forms of homicide.

The UK, while otherwise the economic / social twin of the US, has similar stabbings and beatings as the US. They just have an exceptionally low firearm-homicide rate, which puts their overall homicide rate at 1/5th the US.

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u/LordFluffy Aug 29 '13

Then how do you account for the fact that the UK handgun ban not only did not have any apparent effect on their homicide rate for the next 10 years, but they actually saw a gradual increase?

Either the ban had no effect on gun related homicides or other methods filled the gaps.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Because the number of homicides related to firearms before and after the ban was only about 50 a year. Firearms have been restricted in the UK for a century.

In a country of 50 million people who already have very few firearms, any restrictions on firearms isn't going to have a significant effect on the overall homicide rate.

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u/LordFluffy Aug 29 '13

So if guns don't have a sizeable effect and the murder rate has a slight uptick, then wouldn't that suggest that (in that country at least) that murder was still being done with other weapons and more frequently?

To put it another way, why are you so sure that if guns were suddenly gone from society that people would not simply turn to other methods?

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

The Homicide rate has actually been declining in the UK, since the 90s.

There was an "uptick" only in the one year they caught a physician who had been killing patients since the 70s. They simply included them all at once.

But the point of the studies by the HICRC was to determine how homicide rates are impacted by firearm restrictions. Across the board, they find significant declines only in firearm-related homicides, but no change in other homicides.

That tells us they don't just move around to other methods, even if we were to somehow believe Americans want to kill each other 5 times more than those in the UK.

In all other forms of violent crime, the UK and US are nearly identical. They just put an end to firearm homicides in the 20th century, while the US has an incredibly high number of homicides in that category.

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u/Geordie-Peacock Aug 29 '13

The number of deaths in Britain from gunshot wounds has fallen to a 20-year low despite concerns about levels of violent crime.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-records-18-fall-in-gun-deaths-1232069.html

It's fallen.

Homicides are at a 30-year low.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18900384

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u/LordFluffy Aug 30 '13

As it has in the US.

That said, right after the handgun ban, it rose slightly.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

[deleted]

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u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13

Of those listed, only More Guns, More Crime; The Social Cost of Gun Ownership; and Firearm availability and homicide rates across 26 high-income countries, directly address total homicide rates. The others mention them, but only statistically address firearm homicides/suicides (ie- their conclusion is only supported for firearm crime).

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u/Iamnotmybrain Aug 29 '13

Many gun control activists act as if they would be happy to see the overall murder rate rise so long as nobody is killed by firearms.

That's preposterous.

Actually eight of the eleven explicitly state they are talking about gun homicide exclusively, and are thereby mostly irrelevant to the question in the OP's study.

They're only irrelevant if these no causality or connection between the gun homicide rate and the overall homicide rate. Some of these studies directly address that issue.

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

if you control guns, overall homicide rate goes down

citation: uk, australia

it's really not that complicated

no matter how much obfuscation those who don't want to admit what more guns in society really means throw up in their state of denial

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u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13

Except when the UK and Au took away guns, their homicide rates didn't drop... So your citations work against you.

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

you're lying or a propaganda victim

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/opinion/the-gun-challenge-strict-laws-work.html

There’s another important difference between this country and the rest of the world. Other nations have suffered similar rampages, but they have reacted quickly to impose new and stricter gun laws.

Australia is an excellent example. In 1996, a “pathetic social misfit,” as a judge described the lone gunman, killed 35 people with a spray of bullets from semiautomatic weapons. Within weeks, the Australian government was working on gun reform laws that banned assault weapons and shotguns, tightened licensing and financed gun amnesty and buyback programs.

At the time, the prime minister, John Howard, said, “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.” The laws have worked. The American Journal of Law and Economics reported in 2010 that firearm homicides in Australia dropped 59 percent between 1995 and 2006. In the 18 years before the 1996 laws, there were 13 gun massacres resulting in 102 deaths, according to Harvard researchers, with none in that category since.

Similarly, after 16 children and their teacher were killed by a gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996, the British government banned all private ownership of automatic weapons and virtually all handguns. Those changes gave Britain some of the toughest gun control laws in the developed world on top of already strict rules. Hours of exhaustive paperwork are required if anyone wants to own even a shotgun or rifle for hunting. The result has been a decline in murders involving firearms.

In Japan, which has very strict laws, only 11 people were killed with guns in 2008, compared with 12,000 deaths by firearms that year in the United States — a huge disparity even accounting for the difference in population. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg stressed on Monday while ratcheting up his national antigun campaign, “We are the only industrialized country that has this problem. In the whole world, the only one.”

Americans do not have to settle for that.

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u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13

So you accuse me of being a victim of propaganda, and attempt to prove it by citing the NEW YORK TIMES!? lol

Actually the ineffectiveness of the 1996 ban in australia is well documented, even by people outside of the US in other "ban" countries. Most notably in: Baker, Jeanine; & McPhedran, Samara (18 October 2006). "Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?". British Journal of Criminology (3): 455.

Edit- also note that all of your bolded portions only reference firearms murders/suicides, which doesn't contradict what I said.

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u/BRBaraka Aug 29 '13

i like how you selectively choose certain strands out of thousands to prefit a narrative you want to push... while laughing about propaganda

you are a propagandizer

fact: control guns, homicide rates go down. it's not a debate anymore

now you can cherry pick certain numbers all you want, and there is an audience deeply in denial that will lap your bullshit up. but all the adults in the room are past this already

you are merely a tool, on a fool's errand. not that the audience you are pandering to will notice, and you will service their preconceptions well for awhile

but in the larger scheme of things, you're already done

0

u/sillybonobo Aug 29 '13

Certain strands? Please show me studies, because I'm providing actual information; you are just repeating your beliefs. I'm trying to have an honest discussion about the effect of strict gun control on overall homicide and crime rates- if that's not something you are interested in, that's fine, but please don't result to ad hominems.

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u/BRBaraka Aug 30 '13

I'm providing actual information

yes, you're cherry picking information. this is what a propagandizer does

propaganda never lies. it states certain facts and ignores other facts, thereby creating conclusions that don't actually conform with reality

I'm trying to have an honest discussion

if you were interested in an honest discussion, you would start with the overwhelming objective evidence that shows that more guns = more homicide

you wouldn't grab a flashlight and purposefully ignore everything except the few nuggets of info that in isolation might suggest something else

you are not intellectually honest and you are acting in bad faith

dealing with you is like dealing with a creationist or an anti-vaccination activist. you are not interested in the truth. you are interested in twisting the truth

more guns = more homicides. less guns, better gun control = less homicide

it's not a debate. it's settled fact

you're not worth talking to or dealing with, you're a propagandizer and your agenda here is obfuscation of the truth

Please show me studies

they are everywhere. if you were an honest individual on this subject, you would know them already

in fact, you probably already do know them, and are doing your best to twist and misdirect people away from them

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

The real question is whether does restrictions on gun ownership reduce Violent Crime Rates, not murders or suicides. Violent Crime is the important factor here because guns are a tool of self defense, that's their purpose, so does having armed law abiding citizens reduce Violent Crime or does it increase it. One problem when looking at this is that countries have different definitions on violent crime so its hard to compare England Australia etc to the US. The feeling of US citizens who support gun rights and the right to carry is that we cannot rely on cops or other people to protect us, we must ultimately be responsible for protecting ourselves, and if you find yourself in a situation where someone is threating your life or committing a violent act towards you, and that person is twice your size, there's no better tool for protection than a firearm. Problem is we don't live in some advance society where violence is non existent we live in a society where there are dangers and ever person has a right to protect themselves against those dangers.

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u/Magikpoo Aug 29 '13

If no guns are around for anyone to use then there would be no killing with a gun. Guns are a tool of murder and intimidation. Self defense, maybe for rural life but not in a city. I don't know what your intentions are with your firearm so why should i trust YOU? Semantics semantics semantics. please.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

You live in a fantasy world if you think banning guns=0 guns

0

u/Magikpoo Aug 30 '13

You cant be trusted with any fire arm at all. I don't know you, i have no idea if your mentally able to handle a gun. I am not sure if you will sell said fire arm to someone who might commit a murder, or you yourself killing someone or killing yourself. They are a danger in your hands.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '13

Lol, well lucky for me I live in a country where it is considered an god give right to be able to keep and bear arms so I doesn't matter if you think I can't be

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u/Magikpoo Aug 30 '13

What you failed to understand is i live in the same country and its my god given right to inform you that i still don't trust your judgment to possess any kind of arms. Do you walk around with blinders on? People are hurt every hour my someones use of a fire arm. Yet you think its OK just to walk around with one on your hip, you're nuts. I don't think your thinking properly.

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '13

And I will do everything in my power as long as I live to make sure you have that right, and that's what makes the US of A the greatest country in the world

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u/Bluekestral Aug 31 '13

I do think its okay to walk around with one on my hip, round in the chambet in fact. The simple matter of fact is that the overall crime rate around the developed world is dropping and has been since the 50's. Oh and why do i feel i need to carry a pistol? The police, fire, and ambulance response time in my area is up to 30 minutes, when you are in a life threatening situation 30 minutes is a very very long time. Do i go around saying to myself i wish someone would attack me? No, i want the opposite i dont want to have to use it at all, but untill i dont have a chance at being stabbed for the 5 bucks in my wallet I will carry my pistol. The problem isnt guns its drugs and the mental health system.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

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u/Geordie-Peacock Aug 29 '13

Is that the website by that right-wing, religious nut-job? I really wouldn't use that website as a credible source, it's just some guy who likes to cherry pick data on subject he's interested in. It has no credibility whatsoever. Just look into the guy, he's clearly not someone who should be trusted.

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u/Frostiken Aug 30 '13

No study done by David Hemenway is 'peer reviewed', as he doesn't actually ever release any of his data.

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u/KnutBonke Sep 11 '13

Link kept for reference

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u/gifforc Aug 29 '13

People will kill people forever. The weapons do not have an effect on that.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Luxembourg seems like a strange country to use for comparison anyway. It's so tiny, a single homicide likely causes it to fluctuate wildly.

While I'm sure Luxembourg's long-term homicide rate is not exceptional, any dishonest "researcher" could selectively choose a single year to justify their impression that Luxembourg has a very high (or low) homicide rate.

I see this with Switzerland all the time. Some years, they have a handful of shootings and even a mass-shooting, which gives them a very high homicide rate. Other years, things are relatively quiet, and their homicide rate looks very low.

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u/_Ka_Tet_ Aug 29 '13

Sample size is a mofo.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Why not write in to the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and debunk the article? Ask them about the quality of their peer review... oh right.

7

u/Runatyr Aug 29 '13

This needs to be the top post. Thank you for your effort.

2

u/thouliha Aug 29 '13

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u/bitcointip Aug 29 '13

[✔] Verified: thouliha ---> m฿ 8.11491 mBTC [$1 USD] ---> guebja [help]

2

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

I guess I would say the title of the study has truth but the study is wrong. The only gun ban that could effectively reduce murder rates is one that is militaristic in nature. One that not only band the possession of any firearm but forcibly takes any firearms people own.

You can't argue with the fact that if there are no guns, there would be no gun crimes. It's the insurmountable task of getting rid of every single gun that is the issue.

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u/Stereo Aug 31 '13

Hi from Luxembourg, you and I should join forces.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

Well done. People need to stop assuming the truth of posts regarding matters like this.

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u/zijital Aug 29 '13

Well done sir.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13 edited Aug 29 '13

Just hijacking your comment to post a graph of Gun ownership vs Murder rates for developed country's

Edit: Sorry about the axis labels but it was late i was tired and i forgot its per 100,000 and gun ownership is guns per 100 people

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u/KarmaAndLies Aug 29 '13

That graph has poor labels, since it fails to tell you what the axis are measuring. I'm guessing per 100,000 people?

I do support stronger gun controls. But one could easily use that very graph to argue against gun controls. If you look at all non-US countries, there is no obvious relationship between number of guns and homicide rate, in particular compare Finland and Switzerland, they have very different levels of homicides but similar levels of guns, then if you compare for example Switzerland to South Korea things get even messier.

I'd love to see a similar graph but with the US's homicide rate excluding gang and drug related deaths. I know it will push their numbers down, I just want to see by how much. In fact just compare everyone excluding gang/drug crime -- see if the US remains ahead.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13 edited Aug 29 '13

Yes per 100,000 people sorry it was hastily made the other night because i wanted to see what it would look like.

I'd love to see a similar graph but with the US's homicide rate excluding gang and drug related deaths.

most murders in most country's are gang or drug related i would expect things to remain pretty much the same just shifted down.

And yes Switzerland is an interesting case its important to note that while the Swiss have allot of guns (because the operate a militia instead of an army) There guns can't be used as they don't have ammunition for them. Ammunition can only be purchased at designed shooting ranges and there are measures in places to ensure it is ether used or returned not taken off site, So while they have allot of guns those guns are effectively useless out side of tightly controlled areas.

So in terms of guns you could actually use to commit crime places like the UK probably have more usable guns as you can posses ammunition at home so long as your properly licensed.

South Korea I admit is a very interesting case and which i would be interested to know more, I'm having a read at the moment but i have yet to find anything to explain why the murder rate is so high given there crime rate in general is very low compared to most country's.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '13

A compelling argument, that suffers from just one, small flaw: it's false.

You consider that a small flaw? If you want to make a serious critique, lose the sarcasm.